Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,108
back down the aisle when there was a sudden crack and shattering. One of the stained-glass windows on the right side of the building had broken open in the bottom left corner by the impact of a thrown bottle stuffed with a burning rag.
“Oh, my God,” Loulou breathed, and suddenly, we were both thrown back to four years prior when a rival MC had tried to burn us out of Zeus’s cabin with Molotov cocktails.
Bat didn’t hesitate. He was running before I could open my mouth to protest, swinging off his cut to use it to stamp out the small fire where it burned next to a set of wooden pews. It went out with a faint hiss. Seth was suddenly there too, standing in front of Bat facing the window as if he was ready to catch whatever might come next. We all waited quietly, vibrating with fear, for more to be thrown inside.
None came.
Bat lifted his cut and crouched to check out the bottle. He nudged it over with his boot, and growled, “There’s a fuckin’ note inside. It’s a goddamn warnin’.”
“What does it say, Mr. Stephens?” Grandpa demanded regally as he swept down the pews to Bat’s side, chin held high without one flicker of fear in his Lafayette blue eyes.
Bat snapped his black gaze up and over to us. “Romans 5:19 ‘For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.’”
As if summoned by his words, the crash and shatter began again, this time from a window on the opposite side of the church.
Seth rushed to try to extinguish the flaming bottle with his suit jacket, but it immediately caught fire. A moment later, another one was launched through the other window and landed beside Bat.
“Get out!” he hollered as he fell over the bottle with his leather jacket to put out the flame.
“Come on,” Loulou ordered, dragging me by the hand as she bent to pick up Shaw and fix him on her hip.
He went willingly, Steele already up in Tempest’s arms and Amelia bringing up the rear with Cleo, who looked utterly terrified.
Grandpa was ushering the spooked crowd down the hall to the side entrance, which was blessedly not blocked off. Ransom, of all people, was holding it open for everyone.
“Priest made me wait outside,” he explained as we rushed past in a semi-organized stampede.
Of course, he did.
I didn’t have time to dwell on that, though. Immediately, we got to work organizing the chaos, making sure no one was hurt. Kodiak was also there, his massive black and silver bike in the lot, his big body disappearing around the corner just as we spilled outside.
Hunting down the arsonist, no doubt.
I had a sinking feeling he wouldn’t find him.
“Where is Tabby?” I asked after I tallied everyone, going to Seth, who was charred and coughing from his heroic deeds. “Where is she?”
“She didn’t come today,” Seth croaked. “Wasn’t feeling well.”
Something nudged at the back of my mind, but I forgot it when I saw Bat finally emerge from the smoking stone building. There was soot on his cheekbones, ash in his short, cropped black hair, and a livid burn already bubbling the skin over his right hand.
Immediately, Tempest, Steele, and Shaw ran to him.
Amelia fainted, but Seth reached over quickly to catch her as she did.
I took a moment to look at Amelia swooned in his arms, wondering why a woman like that had ever been drawn to a man like Bat. It occurred to me that some people might consider Amelia and I cut from the same cloth. We were both petite and pretty, favouring feminine clothes and female companionship. But that was where the similarities ended.
Beneath the pink and silk, I had a spine of steel that had been forged in the fires of my neglected youth, the horrific betrayal of my father, and the illness that plagued my beloved sister. I was not so easily torn, so easily defeated as Amelia gone to raptures because her husband was burned.
I was the kind of woman who would stand in the fire with him if it meant being beside my man.
With a last––probably judgmental––look at Amelia, I went to Bat, noting that he was already being well cared for by his little crew.
“Fire’s out, but there is smoke and water damage,” Bat told me over the increasing roar of motorcycles.